Surgery for Melanoma Liver Mets Can Prolong Survival

Medscape | Jul 09, 2014

“Patients who can undergo complete surgical treatment of melanoma liver metastases should consider this option, say oncologists from California.

“In their experience, hepatic resection [removal of part of the liver] for metastatic melanoma significantly improves survival over medical treatment alone, they report in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

” ‘One of the take-home messages of the study is that surgery still can play a role in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma, even in the era of more effective medical therapies,’ said researcher Mark Faries, MD, FACS, director of the melanoma research program at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California.”